He was back, sliding through the cold air in great swooping circles with me at their centre. Balanced on two great wings, he lit the night sky with ostentatious jets of fire from his throat, the flame glittering off his vivid red scales.
A part of me wanted to spread my wings and leap up to join my suitor in the air, but I repressed it: a fire dragon had to act with a little dignity, a queen more so than a drake. Instead I lay motionless in the mouth of my den, my snug basalt cave atop my great mountain, and pretended not to notice as he soared and spun and shone across the sky for my enjoyment.
Twelve times already he'd come to flash his wings at me, and twelve times I'd driven him away, my teeth snapping at his tail. It wouldn't do to seem desperate, after all. But at the same time, I didn't want him giving up and trying his luck elsewhere. Perhaps tonight was the night?
I shouted up to him in my loudest, most roaring voice. "Are you going to flap around out there all night, pirouetting like a sky drake in a dancing contest?"
It was an invitation, and as soon as he heard it he started spinning towards me in a shrinking spiral, until with a spread of his broad leathery wings he came to alight neatly on the broad shoulder of stone in front of my cave, claws clattering on the rock.
He was big for a drake - perhaps two-thirds my own size - his long, lithe body armoured in a vibrant coat of blood red scales. A rippling row of blades ran down his spine, all the way from the twisted horns on his head to the menacing curl of his tail, each one as long and dangerous as the curving claws on his toes. Two evil yellow eyes stared at me intently from a face caught in a leering snarl, a rich and varied mouthful of blood-bleached fangs bared.
I thought he was cute.
But more important than the way he looked was the way he smelt. He carried a potent reek, sharp and acrid and alluring, a smell of fire and sulphur that seemed almost corrosive. I inhaled deeply, savouring the caustic odour, finding it to my liking. And I saw him sniff the air, tasting my own scent, the sour and stagnant death-stench I worked so hard to maintain.
"Well?" I used my bluntest, heaviest tone, and accompanied it with my best glare, sitting down on the rock with exaggerated nonchalance.
"I gaze at long last on Soursedge, vile fiend of the Pike, bane of the northern clefts." He spoke in a voice like molten gravel, piercing me with his eyes. "I was drawn by the legends born in the wake of your desecration, that tell of your loathsome heart, of your cunning and merciless mind, of your thundering roar which fills hearts with quaking terror for miles in all directions. Of your dread deeds, of the death and destruction you wreak with your sundering talons, your snithing teeth, your infernal all-consuming fire. And yet, I realise now that the legends did you no justice, for you are truly a more gruesome, despicable and terrible monster than ever they imagined."
Well. He certainly knew how to talk to a girl. "Go on..."
"Such wings! They could block out the very sun and wither the land. Such talons! They could slash open the very rocks and reduce them to dust. Such eyes! They could pierce the very hearts of the sternest queens and reduce them to thralls. Such a stench! It could penetrate into the very earth and leave it barren and lifeless. Surely no creature as repugnant and catastrophic as yourself has ever before crawled out of the dark recesses of the abyss."
His words caressed me, making my heart pump a little faster and my blood run a little warmer. "And who might you be, who flatters so insidiously?"
Before he could answer we were both distracted by the booming rustle of oncoming wings. Even before Marmondwike came into view I knew her by a stray whiff of her scent: a distinctively rich putrid foulness. She landed easily on the rock beside the drake, her charcoal black-scaled bulk overshadowing him as surely as her cloying fetor, blacker than her scales, overpowered his volcanic reek. He looked up at her in some confusion, unsure what to make of this new arrival.
"Why hello there, Sedge, who's your little friend?"
Marmondwike never talked in a manner befitting a fire queen. It was part of the reason I hated her: not only was she bigger than me, stronger than me and had a more evil stench, but I could never shake the impression that she was somehow more fearsome and terrible than I was, despite the fact that I'd never seen her intimidate or defile anything, and never once heard her say a harsh word to anybody.
"My name is
Sour
sedge. And he was just complimenting me on my loathsomeness."
"Ooh! Flirting! Mind if I stay and watch?"
"Yes, I do mind!" I shot her a scalding stare, but she just sprawled down comfortably and gave me a look of friendly innocence. I turned back to the drake. "This is my insufferable neighbour, Marmondwike, a white-hearted worm beneath our consideration. Just ignore her and maybe she'll
go away
." These last two words I spat at her with vehemence.
"I don't think I caught your name, darling," she said to the drake.
"Um... hello, nice to meet you, I'm Pontefax," he replied, looking somewhat put out. "I mean," he said remembering himself, turning back to me and recovering his earlier poise, "I introduce myself,
Pontefax
the Sly, despicable devourer from the eastern vales." He unfurled his great red wings, stretching them to their full extent to show himself to full advantage. "And I come to offer myself as your mate."
"Good choice," said Marmondwike. Pontefax folded back his wings and looked at her. "A fine queen, dear Sedge. You won't find another dragon anywhere in the northern clefts with such a fiery heart or such fetid breath. To be completely frank she makes me wish
I
were a drake so she'd take
me
as her mate."
"My name is
Sour
sedge!" I rose to my feet and stepped over to the drake, who looked up at me with an endearingly arrogant leer. I needed to be closer to him, to fill my nostrils with his reek, to drown out the stench of Marmondwike. "If I were to demean myself so far as to take a snittering scrap like you as my mate, I'd give you eggs and protect you from harm with tooth and talon and searing flame. What could you possibly offer me in return?"
"Devotion." He didn't speak any quieter now that I was right next to him. "I would devote myself to your dark glory, to your sordid heart, to your behemothic body. I would go out into the world and fight and fly and bite and burn for you, and bring back food to feed you, all while you sleep. I would
dote
on you."
I wanted him. He was everything a drake should be: silver tongued, vile bodied, evil breathed and
mine
. I fancied lying curled close with him, one wing draped over him, feeling him pressed hot against my belly as I drifted to sleep.
"If you were to do any less," I growled, "I would eviscerate you. Slowly. With a single talon."
"Oh get to the good bit," interrupted Marmondwike. "What about sex?"
I gave her a look to suggest that the threat of evisceration applied to her too. Pontefax, however, barely hesitated. "Such a queen as you must burn with all-consuming lusts. With me as your mate, no matter how searing your heat, how unslakable your need, how depraved your sexual whim, whenever, wherever, however often, I'll be there for you. Ready to satisfy you completely with the power and fury of a volcanic eruption that births a mountain, and the stamina and endurance of the wind wearing it back down into dust."
I prodded my "all-consuming lusts" with a mental talon, my mind turning over thoughts of Pontefax mounting me roughly, his talons digging into the scales of my back, his hot horrible breath on my neck... his tail rubbing against mine... his drakehood questing between my legs... Marmondwike watching voyeuristically from the mouth of the cave...
I hurled the thought away. Damn that queen! She was even invading my privatemost thoughts now! I focused on Pontefax, deciding to try a little flirting of my own.
"I'd never allow you to mount me, Pontefax the Sly." He looked crestfallen. "Not until I'd laid your foul body down and run my tongue and talons over it, until you screamed in rapture for me to stop."
He stared at me longingly, his forked tongue flickering between his teeth in anticipation.
"I'd use the tip of my tail."
We both turned to stare at Marmondwike.
"If you were
my
mate, little Pontefax, I could get you screaming in rapture with nothing but the tip of my tail."
She stood and moved to stand close besides the drake, swishing the tip of her black-scaled tail slowly back and forth through the air in front of his face.
"
